Category Archives: Movies

Richard Matheson, RIP

Found out a bit belatedly of the death of one of the 20th Century’s most influential authors, at least to me, Richard Matheson.  He was the rare author whose works spread out form “mere” novels and short stories to include screenplays and many, many famous episodes of classic TV shows, including The Twilight Zone.

Richard Corliss of Time Magazine offers a great essay about the works and influence of Mr. Matheson over his career:

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/28/richard-matheson-1926-2013-the-wizard-of-what-if/

For me, the ultimate Richard Matheson story was/is Duel.  There’s something about the idea of facing off against a mysterious -and homicidal!- truck driver that intrigued and terrified me.  The first movie I ever recall seeing was Duel, which was also director Steven Spielberg’s first big hit and an obvious template for what would become his first MEGAhit, Jaws.

But even taking Duel out of the equation, there are plenty of other memorable movies and concepts he created which are buried deep in my psyche.  The novel I Am Legend (and, more specifically, the Charlton Heston starring second movie version of the same, Omega Man).

There was also the very chilling Trilogy of Terror and that doll…

And let’s not forget the classic Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet!

I could go on, mentioning such classics as Kolchach: The Night Stalker or Legend of Hell House or The Incredible Shrinking Man…but suffice it to say, for the most part I’ve been delighted by Mr. Matheson’s work over the years.  Given the volume of said work, there were bound to be some disappointments and, sadly, my most recent experience with Mr. Matherson’s writing was the novel Hunted Past Reason.

Do yourself a favor and, if you haven’t already, check out the stuff I’ve mentioned above.  But avoid that last novel.

You’re doing it wrong!

A fascinating list of 15 films based on the lives of real people and their true stories that received a backlash from those people…because they felt their depiction in the movies was incorrect:

http://styleblazer.com/152963/youre-doing-it-wrong-15-movies-based-on-a-true-story-that-received-backlash-from-their-real-life-characters/

Haven’t seen all that many of the films referenced there, though two of the bigger exceptions are Ed Wood and The Doors.  I enjoyed both films though Ed Wood clearly tried to create a “happy” ending for the film, that Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space somehow was a triumph when ultimately released instead of an object of complete ridicule.  As for The Doors, Val Kilmer nailed the Jim Morrison role, but the story presented, even to one as fond of the music of the Doors as I am, simply wasn’t all that interesting.  By most accounts, the real life Jim Morrison lived a life of excess, both with drugs and alcohol.  While he found incredible success with his music, those excesses ultimately resulted in dying far too young.  Other than the music and his copious use of alcohol and drugs, I have a hard time recalling other elements of his story as depicted within the movie, which I suppose explains the family’s scorn for Oliver Stone’s film.

Of the films I haven’t seen, I feel for most for  Fritz Ostermueller’s daughter, the pitcher depicted in the movie 42 as a racist headhunter (she noted evidence that suggested this was not the case) and Marc Schiller, one of the victims presented in the recent comedy Pain & Gain.  In the later case in particular, it feels really tasteless for filmmakers to make a comedy of the near gruesome murder of a person, one who wound up in a coma because of the actions of the central characters in said film.

If there’s any lesson to be taken from this list, its that making a movie based on “real life” events and people is tricky enough, but it’s especially hard when the people behind the stories (family or otherwise) are still alive and can voice their displeasure.

Django Unchained (2012) a (mildly) belated review

After sitting around for several weeks, I finally plopped the Django Unchained DVD into my machine last night and gave it a whirl.  As it started up, I thought back to the very first time I ever heard of director/writer Quentin Tarantino.  It was many, many years ago, back in the pre-internet intensive days of 1992 when his first major motion picture, Reservoir Dogs, was making quite a buzz at film festivals and newspapers (remember those?) lauded the work of this wonderful new director.  By the time the movie finally reached my area, I absolutely had to see it.

Watching Reservoir Dogs proved quite the experience, like sitting in the passenger seat of a car which was being driven by a complete maniac, all the time wondering when/if you’re going to crash.  Other than the somewhat ambiguous ending, I loved, loved, loved what I saw.  Never mind that later we found the movie “homaged” (or, if you’re less tolerant, ripped off) City on Fire.  Regardless, Reservoir Dogs was such an incredibly unique experience, at that time, that I had to see more of Tarantino’s works.

His follow up film, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, cemented his reputation as a director/writer to watch, but as much as I liked it, it wasn’t as good an overall film, IMHO, as Reservoir Dogs, mainly because for me the Bruce Willis segment was lacking (though I would hasten to add that I did love both the prologue to this segment, featuring Christopher Walken’s demented “watch” sequence, and the non-chronologically revealed fate of John Travolta’s Vincent Vega).  Mr. Tarantino’s follow up films, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill (Volume 1 and 2), unfortunately, didn’t do all that much for me, though I’ll admit up front I’m in a minority with those particular feelings.  Jackie Brown, for all the fascinating actors, never really engaged me story-wise.  Kill Bill appeared to be Mr. Tarantino doing his personal version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, only using 70’s karate-type action instead of the wild west.  The question I had after seeing the film(s) was why bother with Mr. Tarantino’s version when I can just watch the Eastwood original?

Mr. Tarantino’s next major motion picture, Deathproof, part of the two-part Grindhouse motion picture set, was absolutely great…at least in the latter half of the film.  I absolutely, positively loved the film’s second act while absolutely, positively felt the complete opposite about the surprisingly uninteresting dialogue-filled first half.

Inglourious Basterds was next and proved one of the first BluRay purchases I ever made…but I have yet to actually see the film.  One day soon.

Which brings us back to Django Unchained.  As you can probably imply from the above, my one time love for Quentin Tarantino’s works has fizzled over the years.  Given that I haven’t found the time or inspiration to sit through his last film and the length of time it took me to get to his most recent one, my frame of mind while watching it wasn’t the best.

Yet as Django Unchained rolled out, I was very much into the film.  It was bloody, it was violent, it was profane…and yet also quite hilarious (the movie’s best bit has to be the whole pre-“hooded raid” segment…the dialogue there by the actors, and Don Johnson especially, was hysterical).

Sadly, this highlight of the film led into the second and final act, which while reasonably entertaining was nowhere near as good as what preceded it.  Like Death Proof, we had roughly one half of a great film.  Unlike Death Proof, the better stuff was in the first half.

Before I go any farther, a quick recap of the film’s plot:  Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave in the days just before the Civil War.  He was separated from his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and longs to get her back to his side.  In comes Dr. King Schultz (the excellent Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter, who needs Django to identify a trio of criminal brothers he is hunting.  He frees Django and, after getting his prey, takes a liking to his new partner.  King asks Django to continue to work with him for the winter and, following that, will help him find and free his wife.

It is after winter (and the aformentioned Don Johnson sequence) that we proceed to the movie’s second act, where King and Django find that Calvin Candie (a slimy Leonardo DiCaprio) purchased Broomhilda and has her at his plantation.  The duo attempt a variation on the Trojan Horse (this movie features plenty of echoes to mythology) to try to spirit the woman from his clutches.

The problem with this half of the film is two fold.  For one, it feels disjointed, as if Mr. Tarantino realized belatedly while filming that the movie was running too long and was forced to cut a lot of material in the telling of this last half of the film.  For example, Candie’s sister Lara Lee (Laura Cayouette) is presented in a total of perhaps three or four very brief scenes and barely has any dialogue…and yet I get the feeling the audience is supposed to view her as every bit as evil and slimy as her brother.  However, we simply see too little of her to get much more than a hint of possible incest between brother and sister and almost no real sense of evil.  We’re also briefly introduced to Candie’s “trackers”, a group of mysterious gunfighters in the man’s employ, and the most intriguing of the group is Zoe Bell’s female tracker, a woman who is seen a grand total of maybe two times, who wears a blood red scarf to hide the lower half of her face.  Who is she?  How did she end up being part of this all male gunfighter group?  Is she indeed a deadly gunfighter?  Why does she hide the lower half of her face?  All good questions, NONE of which are ever resolved.  She appears very briefly in one scene and the next time she appears Django kills her and her crew in a matter of a few seconds.

Really?

So, assuming I’m right, Mr. Tarantino was forced to trim an awful lot of material from the second half of the film and it hurt.  But nothing hurt the movie so much as what he had Dr. King do toward the film’s end.  I won’t spoil things too much, but suffice it to say that after all this time, I would have expected this professional bounty hunter to act in a far more professional manner than he did toward the film’s first major climax and not risk his life and the lives of both Django and Broomhilda because of his own stupid pride.

Or, to put it more succinctly for those who have seen the film:  Really?  All you had to do was shake the man’s hand!  Shake it already!

Still, despite a weak and at times confusing closing half, I enjoyed enough of Django Unchained to recommend it, especially to fans of Mr. Tarantino’s unique mix of humor and violence.

Is the Internet worth it?

Fascinating article by Andrew Leonard for Salon.com regarding something that has been on my mind often of late:  Despite all the great stuff it offers, what of the negatives regarding the Internet?  Is all the good worth all the bad, both potential and realized?

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/05/creative_destruction_government_snooping_is_the_internet_worth_it/

Mr. Leonard’s focus is mostly on governmental “snooping” and journalism but it also can relate to the general impact of the Internet on everything, including loss of privacy both unintended and unrealized.  For example, I recall in the earlier, wildly popular days of Facebook that some clever thieves realized that some posters on that social media website would over share their day to day activities, to the point where they posted information about upcoming vacations, including where they were going, when they were going, and for how long.

Which meant these clever thieves now knew when a poster’s home was potentially unguarded and empty and for what specific period of time, making it a perfect target for theft.

Revelations about the Government’s internet snooping should be alarming to most people, but there are other economic factors that I’ve were influenced by the rise of the internet.  I’ve mentioned before how certain “mom and pop” type stores simply cannot compete with full service internet “stores” like Amazon.com and how even some bigger retail chains, including bookstores and electronic stores, now are in danger of closing their doors because of the increasing ease of purchase and seemingly unlimited stock available online.

But there exists yet another big threat created by the internet, one that personally scares me for different reasons:  The possibility of creative destruction.  If you think about entertainment, you think about a few things: Music, movies, television, books/novels, comic books, etc.  All of these creative endeavors are now victims to pirate websites.

Looking for the latest album by artist X?  Download it for free…sometimes before the album is officially released!  Looking forward to seeing movie X?  Same thing.  Novels?  Comic books?  Television shows?  Ditto, ditto, and ditto.

Where will this piracy of creative ideas eventually lead?  If you’re a struggling artist, there’s precious little money to be made in your works.  Whatever little bit you can scrape together is helpful and may allow you to hone your craft and allow you to make better and better product…provided you can indeed pay your bills.  But what if your current work(s) find their way to pirate websites and whatever meager amount of money you might have earned on your current, best works takes a hit because of illegal downloads?

And what of established artists?  Will movie/music companies become more and more fearful of signing off on a big budget item if the worry about how much they’ll lose on the illegal downloads of said item?  Is it possible some companies will simply give up on funding films/TV shows/music albums entirely?  And where will that leave many of us, audiences hungry for new entertainment?

As Mr. Leonard put it in his article:

…we are increasingly sensing that we have no idea where this techno-roller coaster is ultimately headed. There’s a sense that things are out of control. Our growing uneasiness doesn’t jibe well with all the hype about how the world is being made a better place by a proliferation of smartphone apps.

Is Hollywood Broken?

In the past few days, I’ve stumbled upon a pair of interesting articles regarding the well being (or, more accurately, potential very bad being) of the movie industry.  The first dark warnings come from the views of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.  They talk about what they feel is an impending financial “implosion” that’s about to occur in the industry:

http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/lucas-spielberg-on-future-of-entertainment-1200496241/

One person very snarkily pointed out that the thoughts of Mr. Spielberg and Lucas were not unlike a person who murders their parents and then pleads for leniency from the police/courts because s/he was now an orphan.

I wouldn’t go quite that far.  While much of the modern Hollywood blockbuster mentality does indeed derive -for better or worse- from the careers of Mr. Spielberg and Lucas, the ills plaguing the movie industry they describe are also technological in nature, including Netflix, Video on Demand (VOD), etc, all of which were hard to predict many years before.  Still, the “blockbuster” mentality, I would agree, is part of the problem.

This second article, by Lynda Obst and presented as an excerpt from her book, can be found on Salon.com.  In this exerpt, Ms. Obst notes how the decline of the DVD selling industry has been a very hard blow to the movie industry:

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/15/lynda_obst_hollywoods_completely_broken/

I find this a fascinating topic.  Again, Netfix and VOD are probably “guilty”, if that’s the right word, for at least part of the decline of the DVD/BluRay market.

But I think there’s more to it than that.

I’ve pointed out before how I jumped into the laserdisc market because it offered something the video market hadn’t until that point:  Movies in their proper aspect ratio and, often, extras that you couldn’t find elsewhere.  At first, you’d get simple things like trailers.  Soon, “cut” scenes were included as well as documentaries.  I bought a lot of laserdiscs, but for the most part that was in the early days, when I wanted to get my hands on certain films.  As the laserdisc industry was dying and the DVD market was starting to grow, my buying habits of laserdiscs had already dropped considerably.  Not because I was desperate to jump into the DVD market, but because I had most of the films I wanted.

At least those available on laserdisc.

When DVDs really started to become big, an avalanche of other films and -big time joy!- TV shows I desperately wanted but couldn’t find on laserdisc were suddenly available.  Thus, I only too happily transitioned to DVDs and, because they were so much cheaper to buy than laserdiscs, wound up not only bought the newly available films/TV shows but also replaced most of my laserdisc collection.

By the time the BluRay format came along, I was once again in the same situation as with the laserdiscs.  My buying habits had slowed considerably because, again, I had the films/TV shows I wanted.  Nonetheless, the HD draw was big.  There were certain films I had no problems at all re-buying in this format to get the clearest, most beautiful presentation of them.

But many of the TV shows and lesser films I had purchased were fine “as is” and I didn’t bother buying new versions of them.  Once again, I’m in the same situation I was in two times before:  I have most of the stuff I truly want.  There are very few films/TV shows out there I’m desperate to buy and keep in my personal collection.

Worse, I’m finding the newer films to be more spectacle than classically re-watchable.  Mind you, some new films are quite good and I enjoyed watching them, whether it be in the theater or via Netflix or VOD.  But seeing them once is sufficient.  Yes, I enjoyed Iron Man, The Avengers, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and, most recently, Star Trek Into Darkness.

Yet as much as I enjoyed watching them, I have little interest in revisiting them.  On the other hand, I could pull out my copy of The Maltese Falcon or Bullitt or Duel or Jaws or Airplane! or Blade Runner or Metropolis or…you get the picture, and watch them over and over again.

These are the films I want to have in my collection but the fact is that there are only so many of them I strongly desire.  The rest may entertain me but I don’t need to have them.  And once I buy the best copy available of said films, whether it be some spectacular new BluRay special edition, there is little reason for me to buy them again.

Thus, I believe at least part of the reason there is a serious decline in DVD/BluRay sales is this.  For better or worse, the DVD/BluRay format is, like CDs before it, so permanent that there is little need to purchase a movie several times and there are only so many films out there you really, really need to have as a collector.

The bottom line, of course, is that this hurts the movie industry.  Whenever a big source of revenue dries up, it can’t help but to do that.

More Screen Junkies…

Still hanging around the website and found this intriguing -and humorous- little article by Penn Collins regarding roles offered, but rejected, by Al Pacino:

http://www.screenjunkies.com/movies/movie-news/al-pacino-passed-on-playing-han-solo-and-john-mcclane-in-die-hard/

I can sorta/kinda see him being considered, at the time, for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars.  I can also picture him in the Richard Gere role in Pretty Woman.  (That’s not to take away the acting by the respective parties that did work in these films…the movies clearly owed a great deal of success to the acting of Mr. Harrison and Gere)

But John McClane in Die Hard?!?

Whoa.

That’s a tough one to wrap your head around.

I’ve mentioned it before and, given the topic, it bears repeating:  One of my favorite “what if” roles is that of Dirty Harry, the movie that arguably moved Clint Eastwood from rising star to MEGAstar.  The titular role was originally being groomed for…Frank Sinatra.  He passed and other actors, from Robert Mitchum to Paul Newman to Burt Lancaster were considered for the role before Mr. Eastwood took it.

What if, indeed.

Death on the set…

A rather ghoulish list, from Screen Junkies, concerning five movies in which cast or crew died while the project was being made:

http://www.screenjunkies.com/movies/movie-lists/death-on-set-5-movies-that-someone-died-while-making/

I was aware of most of the mentioned works, particularly those whose lead actors died while making the film, Brandon Lee in The Crow and Vic Morrow in The Twilight Zone: The Movie.  Both deaths, indeed all the deaths mentioned here were tragedies yet it is interesting to note the hows and whys of each of them, some more grisly than the others.

If there is one positive aspect to all this is the fact that the most “recent” of the listed tragedies occurred back in 1994, nearly twenty years ago.  One hopes that those who work on film/TV projects have opted for better security.

The Last Stand (2013) a (mildly) belated review

“Like riding a bike.”

That old quote suggests something that once learned is difficult to forget.  Watching The Last Stand, and more specifically the acting of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first major motion picture starring role -excluding the various small and larger cameo appearances in a handful of films- since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in (gasp!) 2003, one is struck with the fact that acting, indeed, is decidedly not like riding a bike.

At least for Mr. Schwarzenegger.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger I most recall is the one that could be alternately terrifying, charismatic, and even outright humorous in his motion pictures…sometimes even in the context of a single film.  Sure, his acting skills are the type that will likely never merit any serious awards, but at his best he could be a very engaging movie presence, one that audiences flocked to in droves.

Then, of course, Mr. Schwarzenegger moved on to politics and, through a unique set of circumstances got himself elected Governor of California.  He spent years away from movies and, having finally finished his term, dipped his toe back into acting via small roles in both Expendables movies (the second of which featured a larger role than the blink and you’ll miss him appearance in the first film).

With 2013’s The Last Stand, Mr. Schwarzenegger took front and center in a motion picture and the results…well, they weren’t all that hot.  The Last Stand’s box office, given the film was a relatively cheaply budgeted work to begin with, wasn’t all that great, though based on Rotten Tomatoes it maybe/coulda done better (critics and audiences gave the film a near identical rating, 60 and 58% approved).

So, was The Last Stand a worthy re-entry point for Mr. Schwarzenegger?

As I mentioned above, I found the acting of Mr. Schwarzenegger in this film lacking.  He reads his lines (even the “funny” ones) in the same dull tone and appears to my eyes unengaged with the material.  Given how wildly ridiculous the premise of the film is, this becomes a BIG problem.

The plot of the movie goes as follows:  A nasty drug kingpin is boldly broken out of a “high security” Las Vegas prison transport, then heads out of the city in a souped up Corvette, his intention being to drive himself to Mexico and safety.  We find that on top of being a high level drug kingpin, he’s also a professional race car driver, so the Feds are quickly overwhelmed in trying to capture him.  Indeed, it becomes clear that all that stands in the kingpin’s way to freedom is the small town of Sommerton Junction and Schwarzenegger’s Sheriff Ray Owens and his few companions.

What could have been a tense (though silly) feature moves along as if it were a documentary on building a fence.  There is precious little tension, almost no humor, and certainly no feeling of dread.  Once the kingpin arrives in the town (after a big shoot out with his minions), our Sheriff pursues the villain in a Camaro for a bit before going mano-a-mano with him.  However, given how gifted our villain supposedly was with driving and how he was driving a super souped up Corvette, one wonders how the Sheriff, in a far less powerful car, could somehow catch up to the villain.

In the end, I have to side with the 40 or so percent of critics/audiences who didn’t like The Last Stand.  Given the slate of films Mr. Schwarzenneger has coming, one hopes he can get his mojo back.  I’d love to see Mr. Schwarzenneger figure out how to ride that bike once again.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) a (SPOILERY) review

Perhaps the movie I most anticipated for summer release was Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to director J. J. Abrams’ 2009 “reboot” of the original Star Trek franchise.  That film proved to be a big success at the box office and was enjoyed by many Star Trek fans new and old.

I, however, didn’t think all that much of the original film.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it.  It just felt like the film after a while devoted a little too much time making references or shout outs to the “old” Trek.  Further, the movie’s story had its share of trouble spots.  For example, I found it hard to swallow the way –waaaaaay– too convenient manner in which the young Kirk just happens to stumble upon the elderly Spock.  I also didn’t like the way Kirk, in the movie’s climax, has the Enterprise fire upon his enemy to kill him, even though at that point the villain is clearly incapable of fighting back.

Despite my somewhat lukewarm feelings for that original film, I was nonetheless cautiously optimistic regarding a sequel.  Like most everyone else with internet access, it was hard not to pick up on bits and pieces of the movie’s creation.  Early word was that Benecio Del Toro was in line for a part in the film, and that instantly created heavy rumors among fans regarding who he was going to play in this film.  Early rumors had it that Del Toro, a latin-American actor, might be playing the best known villain played originally by another famous latin American actor,  Ricardo Montalban‘s Khan.  This superhuman villain first appeared in Space Seed, an episode of the original Star Trek series and subsequently re-appeared as the same character to menace the Enterprise and her crew in what many (including myself) consider the best Star Trek film ever made, 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The rumors regarding Mr. Del Toro’s role picked up steam but the studios vigorously nixed them.  By now, most savvy movie goers were only too aware of a similar stunt pulled by director Christopher Nolan with his third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, wherein the identity of Marion Cotillard’s character was kept hidden but the fan base figured out who she was playing well before the movie’s release.

Now, before I go on, even though I suspect most people are by now aware of who the villain of Star Trek Into Darkness is, I’ll nonetheless issue the following…

SPOILER ALERT!

Still here?  All right, you’ve been warned.

Soon after the announcement of Mr. Del Toro being sought for a role in the new Star Trek film came word he dropped out of the project.  Replacing him, curiously enough, was rising British star Benedict Cumberbatch.  Despite this radical change in casting -at least from a standpoint of ethnicity- the rumors the role remained that of Khan persisted.  More denials were issued and some fans, thinking the studios were being sincere in their denials, looked elsewhere for clues as to who Mr. Cumberbatch was playing.  What was becoming clear is that he was playing some kind of superhuman character and two other possibilities immediately sprung to mind to the fans.

First, was it possible this new Trek film would be a remake of the original series’ second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before?  Could Mr. Cumberbatch be playing Gary Mitchell, a friend of Kirk’s who assumed God-like power and had to be dispatched before he threatened the universe itself?  In that episode, Kellerman played Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, a character that looked an awful lot like Alice Eve, also in the cast of Into Darkness.

Another possibility…was Mr. Cumberbatch playing Zefram Cochrane in a remake of Metamorphosis?

Eventually, Abrams’ and company issued a silly news “release” stating that Mr. Cumberbatch was playing a character called “Jim Harrison”.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, knew Mr. Abrams and company were indeed following The Dark Knight Rises playbook.

Finally, Star Trek Into Darkness was given a sneak preview in Australia several weeks before the general release in the United States and the rumors were finally confirmed.

And then came the problems.

Because Mr. Abrams’ and company chose to go so secretive with the identity of Mr. Cumberbatch’s character, a backlash inevitably grew.  After all, by using the character of Khan, they effectively were remaking the most beloved of the Star Trek films.

The reviews started coming in and, for the most part, they were positive.  Had Abrams’ and company delivered?

For the most part, I would say yes.

Star Trek Into Darkness is certainly not your old Star Trek movie.  I think those critical to the film as being more Star Wars than Star Trek are pretty much on the money here.  For Star Trek Into Darkness is an unapologetic action film filled with one big set piece after another.  There remain logic flaws in the story and there is at least one scene designed to do little more than offer audiences eye candy (I’m referring, of course, to the stunningly beautiful Alice Eve stripping scene, which Mr. Abrams himself has apparently come to realize was unnecessary).

If I had any major beefs with the film, it is in that despite all the well designed action and great effects, the movie’s script could have been so much more than it was.  For example, in the opening segment, wherein Kirk violates the prime directive, wouldn’t it have been so much more interesting (and fun!) if instead of on a planet filled with very primitive peoples, the crew were on one of the more interesting “alternative” worlds as presented in the original series?  How about the same basic premise (needing to do something to help a humanoid race not be extinguished) but instead have the crew deal with what look like 1920’s era gangsters?  Or a world that emulated Nazi Germany?  Or the Roman Empire?

Wouldn’t that have been far more interesting than the primitive people they encountered?

Ah well, it is what it is.

Star Trek Into Darkness, while an enjoyable action film, is nonetheless less creative and “heavy” than most of the good Star Trek features.  When Kirk and Spock confront each other at the tail end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, those scenes carry an emotional weight this new Trek simply cannot achieve…though they certainly try to copy.  Still, the movie remains an enjoyable feature, certainly to my mind better than the first Star Trek film from the same company.

The Outfit (1973) a (very) belated review

Having just seen Jack Reacher the other day and noting Robert Duvall in a small role within the film toward its end, it was intriguing -in a time travel sort of way- to subsequently see a much much younger Mr. Duvall in the starring role in 1973’s The Outfit, based on the third novel in the popular (and many times filmed) “Parker” series.

For those unfamiliar with the Parker character, he first appeared in the Richard Stark (a pseudonym for Donald Westlake) novel The Hunter.  That book would go on to be filmed and released in 1967 as Point Blank and starred the tough-as-nails Lee Marvin.  Author Donald Westlake, for whatever reason, didn’t want the movies to use the actual name “Parker” and therefore in Point Blank Parker became Walker.  Many years later the film would be re-made with Mel Gibson as the Parker character, this time named Porter, in Payback.

The third book in the series, The Outfit, is the focus of this 1973 film.  In many ways, The novels The Hunter and The Outfit are bookends.  They tell a larger story between themselves, one which was trimmed a little to make this film version.

When the The Outfit, opens, we follow two hitmen who find and kill a man.  We then shift to Macklin (Robert Duvall), who is in jail and is in the process of being released.  He’s picked up by Bett Harrow (Karen Black, looking absolutely stunning), who we find is more than a little nervous about being with Macklin.  She has good reason to be, as we quickly find that the man killed at the beginning of the film was Macklin’s brother and the mob wants to get rid of Macklin as well.  In fact, the mob put considerable pressure on Bett -including torture- to pick up Macklin when he got out of jail and had her set him up for a hit.  The mob is upset that Macklin and his brother’s last job, a bank robbery, targeted one of their banks.  Needless to say, the outfit will not tolerate such impertinence.

What follows is an intriguing cat and mouse game between Macklin and the mob.  With the aid of Bett and old friend Jack Cody (Joe Don Baker), Macklin intends to not only put pressure on the mob to call off the hit, but to also force them to pay him and make amends for killing his brother!

The Outfit features plenty of intriguing and familiar faces.  Legendary screen femme fatales Marie Windsor and Jane Greer pop up for a couple of scenes, as do familiar faces such as Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North, Elisha Cook Jr., Joanna Cassidy (in an early, early role), and, as the movie’s main bad guy, Robert Ryan.

The story flows well, never slowing too much and always moving toward its resolution.  If the movie has one big fault, to me it’s the character of Bett Harrow.  While I felt Karen Black delivered a great performance in the film, her character’s story arc was disappointingly small once all was said and done.  Early on in the film Jack Cody states that he and Macklin could do what needs to be done against the outfit without Bett.  Macklin disagrees and she stays in the picture but the movie essentially proves Cody was right.

It’s a minor gripe, to be sure, and while I still believe the best “Parker” film ever made remains Point Blank, to me the director’s cut of Payback (avoid the theatrical cut like the plague!) and The Outfit are neck and neck in second place.  Recommended.

And, just for the heck of it, trailers for Point Blank and Payback